Do you know if the series is over or if there might be season 2?
We still know nothing about Benten's agenda.... What does she want with Friday Fellows, why does she cry when she visits Yajirou, has she ever slept with Akadama....

There was one novel which I haven't read but I understand has been used up. However... I hear a sequel is supposed to be released this year though they are running out of time for that but if a novel comes out then... it is tough to say. The discs are not selling that well but if the novel got a good boost then you never know.

Oh wow wow, thanks for the info! :D

You read japanese, huh? :)

Yes, though still not as fast as I would like! I wish I could finish a novel in a night but more realistically it takes me longer, a week or a week and a half unless I stay up all night. And I buy more than 4 novels a month usually so you see the problem!

But I will probably buy these novels if a sequel comes out as I'll be dying to know what happens. That's how they sucker me into buying the novels, they keep making anime that doesn't adapt all the material!!!

Yeah, these days what with the crazy number of anime studios and shows out there, most titles only get 12-13 episodes and not get renewed....

Did you read the Tatami Galaxy, BTW?

No, never read that one. There are so many...

It's written by the same guy who wrote Uchoten Kazoku. The premise on wikipedia seems very interesting, but I really can't stand the anime drawing style - it's very plain and not very anime-like, and very limited colors. So I was wondering if the novel was well written....

I finally got to this one It started out that hubby watched it as it was airing and I kept asking him "how was it?" and he kept saying "I don't know.. but I'm still intrigued".. So I left it until the season was over and finally got around to it earlier this week. I liked it so much I marathoned it in one night! I now know why he said "he didn't know" because I kept watched each episode to figure out why I kept watching each episode.. Still though I like it a lot. Not sure what a season 2 would look like. I'm actually okay with it ending here honestly.

I really really liked it. Not sure how I'd feel about a season 2 though. I would have preferred season 1 to wrap up the whole thing with Benten instead of leaving it up in the air like that. How Benten ended the series is the only problem I have with the show. I want to know more about her, but I don't think that's enough for another series. Either way, this was my second favorite anime thi season so far (Silver Spoon was my favorite by an inch). I still have a few more shows to watch, but I doubt any of them will get much better than this.

Eccentric Family to me easily had the best combination of characters, terrific quotes, and plot of last season. I think they could pull off another season because most of the first season kind of felt like slice of life in that I couldn't feel which direction this show was going. Plus I would bet money that the creator could make more interesting characters.

Going through my backlog of things I put off last year; this is such a strange, morbid show.

That's pretty clever, but I wonder who bears the larger responsibility: the person making the food, or the person who is going to eat it. Should the former cater to the latter, or should the latter be open-minded about what the former offers.

Going through my backlog of things I put off last year; this is such a strange, morbid show.

That's pretty clever, but I wonder who bears the larger responsibility: the person making the food, or the person who is going to eat it. Should the former cater to the latter, or should the latter be open-minded about what the former offers.

Don't forget Love. That's a theme in this show. :D

And if you are interested in responsibilities of food, you should read Oishinbo.

This series had the most matter-of-fact disregard for someone's life I've seen since reading about the Nazis.

I'm not joking. It was wholly, utterly, and profoundly disturbing.

Well there's the obvious issue of the Friday Fellows eating intelligent beings, but that's a pretty blatant metaphor for the inevitability of death, and even the grim reapers themselves have mixed feelings about it. There's the one guy who tried to manipulate the system to kill people who were in his way but he's, you know, evil, and hated by everyone in the show who isn't explicitly an idiot.

Really can't even think of what made you see it this way. Apparently something about the ending. The old tengu-sensei blasting people into the sky? I got the impression that Benten saved them.

This series had the most matter-of-fact disregard for someone's life I've seen since reading about the Nazis.

I'm not joking. It was wholly, utterly, and profoundly disturbing.

Well there's the obvious issue of the Friday Fellows eating intelligent beings, but that's a pretty blatant metaphor for the inevitability of death, and even the grim reapers themselves have mixed feelings about it. There's the one guy who tried to manipulate the system to kill people who were in his way but he's, you know, evil, and hated by everyone in the show who isn't explicitly an idiot.

Really can't even think of what made you see it this way. Apparently something about the ending. The old tengu-sensei blasting people into the sky? I got the impression that Benten saved them.

No, the feeling peaked around episode 11 and had mostly dissipated by the happy ending.

Akadama-sensei going nuts with his fan was a riot. XD

If being murdered and eaten was a metaphor for anything it was for how the most disgusting evil can insinuate itself into a way of life and pervade tradition and common practice to the point of being invisible to the people partaking in it.

Souichirou's acceptance of death was a different deal entirely, and was quite Zen-like. But it doesn't make the event itself any less psychopathic, which would be blatantly obvious if the anime had shown him being killed and butchered.

This conversation particularly reminded me of the Nazi upper echelon calmly talking about wiping out millions of people for the greater good of an ideal society. Granted, one tanuki hot pot a year is on an entirely different scale, but Christ.

It just mirrored the same twisted, intellectually duplicitous rationale that turned someone from one group killing someone from another group from a horrific crime to something you'd discuss calmly over an after-dinner parlor smoke.

And Soun Ebisugawa was an evil on par with an Orson Welles villain.

PS: In case it wasn't clear, I consider both of these posts to be filled with compliments.

I'll respect anything that can discomfort me to this degree.

(There might also be a traditional element to an annual tanuki hot pot that isn't apparent outside Japan.)

Hm. Well, when you put that way, I think that was part of the point. It's just that comparing things to Nazis is usually the last resort of awful internet rants.

On top of being an "inevitability of death" thing, it was pretty clear throughout the story that it was also an outdated tradition which this one group of old farts, plus Benten, was still doing for no real reason (though they came up with excuses). The show makes its actual stance on things pretty clear when the guy above--who proselytized about his contradictory love of tanukis and desire to eat them--discovered they were going to eat the same tanuki he rescued years ago, immediately tried to save her, and got kicked out of the club. (Benten is...Benten. She probably planned the whole thing, just to mess with everyone.)

It reminds me more of human sacrifices to the gods than the holocaust. They're not exterminating people they don't like, they're "just" killing one member of an idolized out-group (virgins and/or women vs. tanuki?) ceremonially on a regular basis because that's what they've always done, even though they don't remember why.

I guess it's just that I don't usually get angry or offended by something in fiction unless the author demonstrates some terrible political or moral belief. But, my emotions are far from complete or consistent...so.

There certainly is a LOT of subtext going on in this show (eating, death, family, etc, etc, etc), and I first I didn't understand what you were saying about the Nazi thing, but I realized that you were merely addressing the casual nature of the discussion of killing/eating.

I can't really remember, but did the majority of the FF know that the Tanuki were sentient? It was never clear to me if they did or not. After all, tanuki are real creatures and only sentient in Japanese tradition.

Clearly, Benten knows and perhaps the old guy who was the leader of the FF, but the rest of them? I didn't really think that they did.

There certainly is a LOT of subtext going on in this show (eating, death, family, etc, etc, etc), and I first I didn't understand what you were saying about the Nazi thing, but I realized that you were merely addressing the casual nature of the discussion of killing/eating.

I can't really remember, but did the majority of the FF know that the Tanuki were sentient? It was never clear to me if they did or not. After all, tanuki are real creatures and only sentient in Japanese tradition.

Clearly, Benten knows and perhaps the old guy who was the leader of the FF, but the rest of them? I didn't really think that they did.

They knew. Remember Benten took Yasaburo to one of their meetings, and he hung out and ate dinner with them and chatted before putting on a show and Benten told everyone he was a tanuki, which they'd already guessed?

I did like the series, but the air of casual evil really did distract me from the story and subtract from my experience.